1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to wireless telephony technology, and more particularly, to a network-based wireless telephone communication device, which can be either an independent device or integrated to a portable information platform, such as a mobile phone, an electronic dictionary, a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant, or the like, and which is capable of providing an interactive multi-person voice communication session for the user to talk with one or more other persons via voice over a network system, such as the Internet, through a wireless network interface, such as a WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) interface.
2. Description of Related Art
With the advancement in wireless communication technologies, people are now able to use portable telephone devices, such as mobile phones, to talk with other persons while on the road or in outdoors. Mobile phones are typically very small in size and light in weight, and thus have a very high level of portability on the road. One disadvantage of the mobile phone, however, is that it is quite expensive to use.
One solution to the foregoing problem is to use a portable computer unit, such as a notebook computer, that is equipped with a wireless network interface, such as WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) interface, for linking to the Internet via a wireless network access point, and then use an instant interactive conferencing program, such as ICQ, MSN Messenger, or Yahoo Messenger, for linking to each callee's network-linked voice communication platform, such as mobile phone, notebook computer, or desktop computer. This allows the user to utilize his/her notebook computer to carry out a wireless interactive multi-person voice communication session via with one or more persons.
One drawback to the use of notebook computer for wireless telephone communication, however, is that notebook computer is considerably large in size and weight than mobile phone, and therefore has a significantly lower level of portability on the road than mobile phone.